


Labours Rotten Fruit

by impish_nature



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Fallen Angels, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Infection, M/M, Trauma, Warnings: Blood, after the Notpocalypse, crowley does his best, crowley will fight everyone, mentions and memories of falling, ship if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23162314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impish_nature/pseuds/impish_nature
Summary: If you truly reap what you sow-was this really the fruits of their labour?
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	Labours Rotten Fruit

**Author's Note:**

> A friend asked for some aziraphale whump and I got too many ideas, there's another longer story coming shortly which followed their ask more but this one still needed to be written.
> 
> Warnings: Talk and memories of falling. Blood. Dissociation. Infection. This is a rough ride of hurt/comfort. Just saying now.

_Drip. Drip._

He hadn't expected it to be a long process.

_Drip._

Not at all. 

_Drip._

If anything, it should have been over and done with by now, surely? He'd been punished, he'd made his mistakes, he'd paid the price. Surely, it should have completed? Surely by this point, he should only have to deal with the wracking grief of it all inside his own empty skull?

Surely now, She could let him rest.

Let him heal.

_Drip._

...Perhaps it was foolhardy to have believed in mercy at a time like this.

Aziraphale whimpered as he dragged himself around his abode, aimless and lost. Everything felt listless, lifeless, like the very world had been carved out of his soul and it had left him rotten and broken at his core. Every step felt like another wave of exhaustion, another tug down into repugnant black sand filled to the brim with the decaying matter of life and death and sin. He was sinking, further and further and yet he stayed moving, restless, wandering in meaningless circles. Every time he tried to rest, pain blossomed through every fibre of his flesh, reminding him of everything that had happened, as well as everything that was still to come. It rattled through his breath, creaked through broken bone and warped sinew, through torn muscle and bruised skin.

It bled from broken wings, ripped raw and agonising no matter how he lay.

He needed to rest, he needed to heal. 

But he couldn't.

She wouldn't let him.

He couldn't recall when he had stopped moving, only belatedly noting that the room had begun to move around him instead. Dizzying and disjointed, it twisted and turned, breaking into fragmented images that no amount of blinking seemed to correct, his retinas stained with bright sparking images that failed to dissipate. It was only when he realised it was himself swaying on his feet that things came slightly more into focus, though no amount of willpower was able to stop the tremors wracking through him nor the wobbling, bobbing motions his body was hellbent on doing no matter how much he tried to stem their flow. 

And every so often, in moments like this... it hit him.

He'd Fallen.

A choked sob left him, a broken defeated sound, the first he'd made since the entire ordeal. It had all happened so fast and yet the aftermath stretched on and on and he wasn't even sure how long he'd locked himself away in the darkened halls of his own misery. He thought he would have screamed, have yelled and raged and torn the world apart in his grief and pain, but his throat still burned from the initial plunge, the choking rush of air that stole all sound from his lips as it clawed at his face. His throat tightened reflectively at the memory, his eyes trying desperately to squeeze shut to no avail as the ground rushed up to greet him, the knowledge of all that was happening with no way to stop it tying knots around his heart, his wings cracked and uselessly plummeting him faster towards his fate. And when it had all been said and done, there had been an empty hole where his emotions had once resided, a lingering cold nothingness that refused to let him see or feel anything but grey. 

Well, other than pain.

But even that felt hollow, most of the time. It was like an unwelcome guest, sat upon his shoulders. A new state of being. Perhaps this was what it would always feel like, perhaps this was it and the world would forever be a strange, dimly lit, crippled version of what had come before.

The hole in his chest began to fill, sorrow and heartbreak bubbling up to suffocate him, to encase him in a shell of grief that had previously deserted him. He tried to take a step forward, to hide from the thoughts once more, but his feet locked like stone to the floor, the weight of his despair too great a burden to ever move again. It was all too much after the nothingness, all too wide and all consuming. He wondered if he could flood the Earth with his anguish, just like She had done once long ago. Drag everyone and everything down to feel as lost and as cold as he did. 

He hoped he couldn't. He hoped there was no way he could hurt anyone else in his torment, but it all felt too much, like there was no way he'd ever be able to contain all this grief inside himself without bursting at the seams, tearing him apart and taking whatever it felt like with him.

A ticking time bomb of pain just waiting to be unleashed upon the world.

Is that why demons did what they did?

The sorrow leached out of him, fear turning him whiter than paper as the world span ever faster. 

He was one of them now, wasn't he?

He'd _Fallen._

No, that wasn't right.

The fear and anguish twisted and ignited. The world sharpened to a point, vicious and gleaming in his gaze. It was all too sharp, too crystal clear, as if everywhere the sun touched mocked him, belittled him. Everything that pointed towards the holy, the _righteous,_ felt like another thorn in his side that he wished to rip out and cast aside. It lit a frenzy inside him, a fury that set him in motion once more, shattering his grief and remorse, strides snapping and racing even as each muscle cried out against the onslaught.

He hadn't _Fallen_.

It sounded so incidental when it was put that way. _Fallen._ Like he'd tripped and caused his fate, like it had all been an accident and no one was to blame. It made it sound like he had been careless, a fool; that he had coincidentally sealed his fate with his own misfortune. Falling wasn't by design, it wasn't anyone's decision- at least, that's how the story had always been told.

Perhaps before it had just made sense. Perhaps when the Fall had happened that's how it had appeared. But they all knew the truth deep down, as hard as they may pretend otherwise.

 _She_ had decided. 

They hadn't Fallen, they hadn't _tripped_.

She had cut their wings so that Heaven was forever out of their reach.

He loathed the word, loathed how they were taught. The Great Authority never truly gave anyone a choice.

He grit his teeth, trying to make noise but his vocal chords were still unwilling to do as he commanded. The relentless, irritating drip was getting faster and it set his teeth on edge and his hackles rising. His wings burned at his back, limp and cumbersome, brushing up against the floor no matter how hard he tried to force them from existence. 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry, he wanted to call forth retribution and vengeance and swear by whatever was out there that this _shouldn't have happened._ He wanted to ask why, he wanted to know if this was truly what She had wanted. He needed answers, he needed to know. He needed the silence to end, both from himself and the parent that had abandoned them all, so very long ago.

He needed Her to make this right.

Because he hadn't Fallen.

He'd been _pushed_.

Phantom hands pressed into the small of his back, shoving him off course. He stumbled into a bookcase, gripping it tightly, his breathing heavy and stilted, waiting for the momentary panic to pass. 

He hadn't even known that was something they could do. They'd tried to kill him with Hellfire, as if that had been the only course of action they had at their disposal. But maybe that hadn't been the point, perhaps even as a demon he was a threat to their order and his death had seemed the better option for them. So, when he was forcibly summoned once more to the shining white halls, he had expected more of the same. More threats, more negotiations, what with them thinking that they couldn't kill him, after all.

What he hadn't expected was the blinding pain across his back, the sudden dead weight of his own precious divinity. 

What he hadn't expected was being dragged, body crippled by agony, to a room he had never seen before. Where, when he could finally blearily open his eyes again against the liquid pain that gathered there, he saw the open expanse of the earth before him, a macabre vision of everything he held dear calling out to claim its new prize.

One step forward, one sway and he'd fall into the abyss, crash down to earth, never to appear here again.

That was all it would take. It was what they expected him to do. To know his place and what his actions had caused.

But he wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't take the final step.

Even as excruciating as the pain was, he wouldn't do it, not willingly. 

He was meant to follow orders, but never this. They couldn't make him do _this_. 

The soft tut behind him would forever haunt him. It was like he was an inconvenience, the very balance of his soul was on the line and yet to them he was nothing but a small blip in the system, a tedious bother that they needed to stamp out.

He was nothing to them, really.

And yet it still surprised him when the push came. 

When the world turned upside down and betrayal followed him like a trail of stardust and feathers, forever a reminder of what they had done.

Aziraphale shuddered, pulling himself up. He struggled to regain his footing, struggled to get his eyes to focus on the room that kept multiplying, his book covers a mismatch of illegible letters that refused to make sense to him. He dropped his hand from the bookshelf that had been holding him upright, desperate to keep himself afloat and his eyes locked on the black smear he'd left behind, viscous fingerprints dripping pain across his home.

He hoped it had left a mark on them too.

A grim, twisted hope curdled in his stomach at the thought. He hoped his blood burned them as much as it burned him. He hoped they would forever be painted with the wrongs they had committed. Stained for all eternity, marked as traitors to their own kind.

The hope deserted him just as quickly, however, the hollow, cold, loneliness reentering his bloodstream as if the bookshop had crumbled around him and left him exposed to the elements. Or perhaps it was still the lingering memory of the air rushing past him too fast to even breathe it in that left him so brokenly cold. 

After all, did any of it matter, really?

It wasn't like She stopped them.

She'd let them do her dirty work. She'd let them push him from the ivory tower never to be seen again.

If She hadn't wanted them to, then it never would have happened. She wouldn't punish them after the event.

She had abandoned him far too long ago to suddenly care now.

Whether he'd Fallen or been pushed, whether it was by Her design or theirs.

He was still where he was.

Broken and alone.

Lost.

And no amount of grief, of fury and vengeance and sorrow was ever going to rectify it.

_Drip. Drip._

He closed his eyes, the sound entering his head space once more. 

He just wished it was a faster process than it was.

He found himself leaning heavily against the shelf once more, resting his head against his books as if they would comfort him in his moment of need.

He'd thought that the Fall would be it. That he'd come crashing down to earth and slowly but surely he would heal from it. That the bruises would fade from deep purple to a sickly yellow, that the bleeding would cease and the wounds would close. That the broken bones would slowly knit themselves back together, callus over and seal, just like any other wounds that had come before them. 

Only this was something more.

It was like an infection.

Or at least, how he had often heard it described. It wasn't something he'd ever had to deal with, at least not on himself. He'd helped ease pain and suffering in times of need for humans, of course, but it had never been an issue for an angel.

But then again, he wasn't an angel anymore, so it made sense that things would change.

Every so often he'd catch a strange smell permeating the room, a lingering fetid miasma that made his nose wrinkle and his head whip around to find the source. He always pulled himself back though, stared ahead and tried to breathe deeply away from the cloying foul-smelling odour.

He knew its source, if he truly thought about it, but thinking about it was painful, so instead he denied it. Locked away the horrors and threw away the key. 

The horrors kept forcing the lock though, kept breaking down the door until it was a splintered wreck of wood and timber that he desperately tried to seal shut again with every fleeting thought.

He clenched his fists, fingernails biting into his palms as nausea bubbled up thick and fast in his stomach. The bookcase anchored him, kept him from falling into oblivion.

His wings burned on his back.

It was a strange heat, sticky almost, like his wings were more of a garment that clung to his back than his extremities. Every so often they would brush against the skin of his arm or the back of his hand and he would flinch at the heat emanating from them, at the strange sensation of shiny flesh that felt swollen and solid in a way it never had before. They didn't feel like a part of him anymore. Alien and foreign they hung bedraggled from his back, the manifestation of the changes happening to him in ways he could never possibly understand. 

Everything about them was _wrong_. They weren't his anymore, and yet the _pain_. It sunk him into a stupor, a haze of melancholic malaise that he couldn't even think through, his feet moving only in the hopes of ending the suffering. That is until the barest whisper of air dragged across them, his feathers fluttering in a breeze that once would have felt heavenly. But instead, they twisted, like searing hot pokers burrowing into his flesh, like he'd fallen straight through the earth and into the hell mouth and he was forced to remember, forced to fall all over again-

He heaved, hand slapping across his mouth as his teeth bit into his cheek to stem the flow of nausea.

The burning wasn't even the worst of it.

It was the rotting that broke him.

At least, that was how his mind took it whenever he caught a glimpse of them.

He kept trying to deny it, kept trying to force them away, out of sight, out of mind, but as soon as he lost focus they would reappear in his peripheral; decaying and blackened, melting into a dripping puddle of sin on the floor.

He had thought that the change would be immediate.

That it was merely a colour, that pure white could not bear the weight of their sins and like ink it all ran down, never able to be washed out, stains that would forever burden them with their mistakes.

Or at worst, that his feathers would all fall out during the fall, that they would be ripped apart in one fell swoop and they would never regrow the same again.

How wrong he had been.

Even as the bones began to heal, each feather was shrivelling, narrowing, _dying_ whilst still rooted inside him. Black brine and bile oozed up through the shafts, sticking them together in clumps and spreading like a virus across his shoulders. Each pinprick opening had become a weeping wound. His feathers fell out in strange disjointed clumps and if he put his hand amongst them, small pieces bent and snapped like melted hair, with little resistance and even less consistency.

He'd given in earlier, grabbed a handful and tugged but it hadn't made a difference. He'd hoped that the pain would yield, that ripping off the plaster, as it were, would finally start the healing process. Only, instead, there was just a vacant cavity in one wing that burned brighter than the rest, and a paste of foul feathers glued to his hand; another stark reminder of his actions.

Rivulets of dark thick blood oozed all the way down from the freshly torn skin to the ends of his feathers and dripped languidly against the floor, trailing behind wherever he walked.

It didn't even look like blood anymore. He wasn't sure if it was the colour or the thickness, but the more he stared at its trail across his floor the less he found himself concerned about where it was coming from. It might as well be ink from the books that spanned across his bookcases, all the words seeping off the pages to languish on the floor with him, crying out in horror at the fate that had befallen him.

...He should probably clean up.

But was there even a point anymore?

He just couldn't find it in himself to care. There had been a burst of energy at some point- maybe? He wasn't even sure how long ago that had been- an all consuming urge to clean and be clean, as if he could wash it all away and suddenly everything would be OK again. But then the fog had returned, the buzzing nothingness that told him to stop, to stay empty, devoid of emotion where it was safe. It hurt but not as much as realising what was happening did, so he stayed in the haze, in the never ending loop of numbness.

Aziraphale's breaths evened out, the room spinning ever so slightly slower as he finally found the energy to push himself back upright. The emotions from before were fading, leaching out of him, even the pain was receding behind the grey unfeeling haze.

He'd come to terms with it soon, he just... wasn't ready to yet.

Being numb was all he had to cope with it all.

As long as he was numb, nothing in the world could get to him.

Or so he thought.

The silence was suddenly cut short by the rattle of the door.

He flinched at the sound, though it was one he'd heard previously. The odd hopeful or stubborn customer who ignored the sign on his door. The knock of a wayward human hoping to catch his attention. But all of them left empty handed and without interaction, with him hiding behind closed doors and begging them all to leave him be. 

No, it wasn't the door rattling that had the barrier of numbness falling.

It was the sound of the lock clicking open that shook him to his core.

There was only one person-

And he wasn't ready to face him yet.

Adrenaline fuelled him as he scuttled into the rows of bookshelves, desperate to find himself a corner and hope against hope that the other realised his visit was unwanted without any conversation. He just wanted him to leave, just for a little while longer. He'd get his head around all of this soon, start to heal and then- then he could face him.

Until then he needed to grieve on his own, in his own time. He couldn't pretend, not in front of him, not that everything was fine, but he couldn't show him all this pain either.

"Aziraphale?"

He whimpered, biting down on his hand at the call. He didn't know anything was wrong, just making a house call, inquisitive, an old friend hoping for a normal, everyday response.

But he couldn't give him that.

"You are here, right?" The question was laced with annoyance and confusion. "Come on, Angel. This is getting ridiculous, are you purposefully ignoring me? I thought we'd got past all this with- oh, I don't know, averting the Apocalypse?" The frustration dripped from his tongue and all Aziraphale could think was _I'm sorry, I'm sorry-_ but not a word would pass his lips, not until Crowley left. "We're on the same side, right? You haven't decided otherwise, have you-"

He wanted to respond, he wanted to cry out that _No, of course not! Of course we're on the same side-_ his friend sounded so crestfallen, so disappointed, but the truth would be far more painful if he let the conversation begin.

"Aziraphale?" Why did he sound worried suddenly? Why had the anger faded into something more... disturbed? "Do books... leak?" It was a strange high pitch question, like he was hopeful, like he knew he was wrong but desperately wished that he wasn't.

He really wished he'd cleaned up now.

"I'm not leaving." The words were adamant, solid as stone and he hated them as he prayed to someone he knew would never listen to him again. "If you're here or not, I'll wait for you to come back."

_Damn it all._

_Damn him. Damn them. Damn Her. Damn them all._

The click of low heels felt like a death toll. It snapped in a quick pace, his heart lurching with every step Crowley took. He could practically feel the agitation in the movement, the shift from foot to foot as if the other wasn't quite sure what to do or how to go about it- he understood entirely.

He could feel him getting closer though, feel the heat of another as a cold sweat broke out over him. He didn't even know he had it in him to feel the cold anymore against the rising temperature of his brow and yet ice pumped through his veins with every _snap_ and he cursed his own follies for having backed himself into a _corner-_

He quickly turned around, towards his books. Perhaps if he could pretend- and it would be so much easier without seeing him- then maybe, just maybe, Crowley would leave none the wiser. He closed his eyes and focused on his wings, focused on hiding them, pushing them out of sight even if whilst healing they could not truly be tucked away. It felt like sandpaper across the surface of them but at least _he_ couldn't see them. 

The footfalls stopped, the last one sounding like the thud of the guillotine that he could still recall from a long ago cell. 

Funny really, how Crowley had saved him from that fate and yet would seal it this time round.

"So, there you are."

The words were nonchalant, though barely held together. A mask of indifference that he was sure would be easy to see through if he looked into his eyes.

Aziraphale coughed, refusing to turn around and do just that. He took a few books off the shelves, staring at them as if they were the most important things in the world, all the while truly focusing on keeping his wings out of sight. "Oh, Crowley. Sorry, I'm rather- rather busy at the moment."

"Is that so?"

He tried to swallow down the fear, tried to ignore the burning in the back of his skull where another's gaze rested, tried instead to latch on to the needle like pain that dragged its fingernails through his feathers so that he wouldn't forget what was at stake here. "Y-Yes, please, uhh, please leave."

"No."

"No?" The word felt like lead, bitter and fearful as it fell like a stone between them.

"No." He said it so simply, so direct and impassive, like there was no reason for him to go anywhere.

"Crowley, I really must protest-"

"No, you've ignored my calls, you've refused to open the shop in weeks-"

God, had it really been weeks? It felt like hours, or years.

"-and I'm not leaving until you tell me what's up."

"What's up is that I'm busy." Aziraphale grit his teeth, slipping a book back into it's spot before taking another off the shelf and turning his attention to that one instead. 

"What's all over the floor, Angel?"

His teeth began to ache, the moniker a sharp twisted reminder in his heart. "None of your concern." He snapped the book shut, the thud final, though without looking, he wouldn't be able to tell if it had had the desired effect or just angered him further. "Just a little... incident, one that I do not have time to deal with."

"Is that why it's all over your back too? No time to clean your beloved suit jacket either?"

Aziraphale's head snapped up, twisting to check over his shoulder as if he'd be able to see. Instead he was met with golden eyes as he accidentally did what he'd promised himself he wouldn't and for the briefest moment looked at the other, still stood at the end of the row of shelves. He scowled, turning back to his books, turning away from the man that only wished to help, because it was simpler this way, easier for the both of them. 

He'd tell him when he was ready. 

When he understood what was going on.

Because even _this_ was so completely off kilter. They'd argued before, of course, they'd bantered and bickered and all the rest of it, but this felt just as cold and hollow as the rest of the world felt.

There was silence for a harsh few breaths, and for a moment, for a brief moment he hoped that the other would get the hint and leave-

"...What's really going on, Aziraphale?"

The moment snapped like a thread, along with his patience.

If he couldn't get him to leave of his own accord, he'd have to force the issue.

He dropped the books at his feet, pure unadulterated anger pumping through his bloodstream as he span around with a snarl across his face.

"For goodness sake, Crowley-"

Oh.

_Oh._

He hadn't realised.

"Aziraphale?"

The word came through strangely, like he was out of focus; a broken radio that couldn't connect with any solid frequency. He could see Crowley before him, stood in frustrated shock, his hands balled into fists at his side, but the image was off, like he wasn't really there, disjointed and strange, a mere reflection of the man he'd known. He hadn't realised on the quick glance, the ethereal glow of his golden eyes enough to remind him that he shouldn't even be _looking._ But now that he had made the choice, now that he was taking in his friend in all his usual glory he came to the sickening conclusion that the world truly would never be the same, no matter how much he pretended or how much he hoped that things could work out.

He couldn't _feel_ him.

He'd never truly noticed before.

And wasn't that the worst of it? To not notice until it was gone forever.

There was a pained noise, a sharp keen of bitter remorse, and Aziraphale didn't know which of them it had come from.

"Angel? Angel, listen to me."

He blinked and suddenly Crowley was a step before him, within a blink as if he'd lost all bearing on time and space- maybe he had, he couldn't be certain anymore. There was a sickening, vicious gleam to his face, a strange, seeking, dancing pattern to his eyes that he couldn't quite follow. He hadn't seen this look before, even when they'd fought, even when the other pushed him away and tried to intimidate him, his expression had never been so chilling in it's intensity.

But as before, the numbness was spreading, that horrible loss of care as the world crumbled around him.

_He couldn't feel it._

"Who did this to you?" Aziraphale jolted as Crowley shook him and belatedly he remembered what he'd been focusing on. All of his focus had puffed out of existence when he'd finally noticed how much he'd lost, and his wings had flourished out for him to see in all their repugnant glory. All his scars, all his sins laid bare. "How could She-"

"Does it matter?" Aziraphale let his head fall on to the other's shoulder as he shook him again. "The others, not... not Her."

"Of course it bloody matters! They- you- this shouldn't have happened! Not to you. Never to you." 

Aziraphale pulled back enough to stare at him, let himself truly take in every expression, every twist of his mouth and flick of his eyes. He let them both sink to the ground, pulling the other with him as he hoped against hope that the other would stay there with him.

"Angel? Angel, speak to me, please."

"I can't feel it." Yes, that seemed like the right answer, the right thing to say. It made the most sense to him.

"Feel it? Feel what?" 

Aziraphale frowned through the daze, he didn't like that tone, that hitch of breath, that panic laden lilt.

"Love. I can't- I can't feel it anymore."

"Oh. Oh, Aziraphale." Crowley pulled him in close, grounding him in reality with his pleasant warmth, so unlike the fire and ice he had been feeling without him. "It's still there. I can assure you it's all still there. The world around you hasn't changed." 

Oh, but it had. 

The world was so much greyer without that bubbling love that even in the worst of times filtered softly through the streets. There was always hope and always love, even in the darkest of times.

And it would forever be that much greyer now that he knew how much love he had missed out on from the one who mattered the most.

It had mingled through his doors, slinked soft and unassuming through his books and he'd never truly appreciated it's importance.

"And yours?" It came out as a confession, as if he was confessing sins he hadn't even realised he had committed. It bubbled up in an apology for never suspecting, for never giving in to his own feelings and reciprocating because it wasn't allowed, it wasn't enough, he hadn't realised the extent of his love for him-

"Still there, ready whenever you are."

Oh.

Exhaustion overtook him, let him burrow into the warm space that Crowley had created for him, let himself rest as best he could. His wings still burned but the turmoil in his mind eased ever so, as if the dam had broken and the pieces of him that remained could finally begin to heal. His muscles began to relax, the ceaseless pacing of before nothing more than a distant memory as he closed his eyes and clung to the man before him.

"They'll Fall." Crowley's snarls were loud and sharp- too bright, too bold for him, he felt the need to cover his ears and block out the sun, but all he could do was shake like a leaf swept up in his storm. He was filled with a righteous fury that Aziraphale himself couldn't dredge up and it overwhelmed him as much as it gave him hope. "They'll Fall for doing this- She can't- Their sins are so much greater than yours. How _dare_ they-"

"Crowley." His words were beginning to reduce into hisses, vicious little noises that he couldn't voice or contain and Aziraphale didn't want that for him, didn't want him to be as lost as he was because of this. He needed him to ground him, not storm off to fight a war that he couldn't bring himself to fight.

...He didn't want to be alone anymore.

Crowley's eyes found his, resolute and bright with fury. "If She doesn't make them pay, I will, Angel, don't you-"

"Don't."

The light in Crowley's eyes dimmed, ferocious but questioning. "Why? Why are you defending them?"

"I'm not." 

"Then-"

"Angel." Aziraphale choked on the word. It felt like bile as it crawled out of his lungs and into his throat. "You shouldn't call me that."

Crowley's face softened, the anger still burning but hidden behind the veneer of concern for his well-being. He ran a hand through white locks, soothing where he could. "Why not?" 

Aziraphale didn't understand how he didn't get it. How could he not see how blasphemous that was? How could he not see how strange it would be to still call him that? "Because I'm not one anymore." His lip trembled at the admission, at voicing it all, as if doing so made it true, and before it had all been a choice to believe in it or not.

"Fallen or not, you'll always be my Angel."

Aziraphale whimpered, clutching tighter to Crowley's sleeve. He shouldn't take comfort in that, but he did. There was a deep yearning in his soul for someone still to see him how he was, how he had always been. Crowley seemed to get the message, wrapping him up even further in his grip, shielding him from the world and everything out there that wished to hurt him.

"Anything for you, Angel, anything for you."


End file.
